Israel announced Thursday that the Hamas leader, considered the architect of October 7, had been killed during an operation in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. A few months ago, franceinfo collected the testimony of Yuval Bitton, who saved the latter’s life, victim of a stroke.
Published on 10/18/2024 07:57
Updated on 10/18/2024 07:58
Reading time: 3min
type=”image/avif”>>>> Former Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar in February 2017. (SAYS KHATIB / AFP)
This is an extraordinary testimony that Franceinfo offered you in June 2024: that of an Israeli doctor who saved the life of Yahya Sinouar, 20 years ago. The leader of Hamas was “eliminated” by the Israeli army on Thursday, October 17, during a ground operation in Rafah, which did not directly target the latter.
Yahya Sinouar, considered the architect of October 7, 61, led the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza since 2017, before being named political leader of Hamas in early August after the death of Ismaïl Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in a attack blamed on Israel. The army and the internal intelligence services »confirm that after a year of hunting“His death marks “the beginning of the end” of the war in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech.
Yahya Sinouar came close to death several times before this ground operation. And notably, in 2004, where, suffering a stroke, he was saved at the last minute by an Israeli dentist. Yuval Bitton then headed the dental clinic at Beersheba prison: it was he who ordered the hospitalization of this prisoner, then unknown to the general public.
Aged 37, the man who had run the dental clinic at the Beersheba penitentiary center for a little less than ten years was given inmate number 733-333-5 in early 2004. This is Yahya Sinouar, the future number one of Hamas. That day, he seemed disoriented and complained of neck pain: “I made the diagnosis. It was a stroke. It was me who decided to rush him to the hospital. An abscess was pressing on his brain. They emptied it. When the “When the operation was finished, he thanked me and told me that I had saved his life.”
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A photo taken during a discussion between Yahya Sinwar (left) and Yuval Bitton (right) in the 2000s. (YUVAL BITTON / RADIOFRANCE)
“When he came back, he wrote a letter to the Hamas leaders and told them that I had saved him and that he was grateful to me”» declared Yuval Bitton on franceinfo in June 2024. “These are our values. And if I had to do it again, without hesitation for a second, I would do it“, he slipped.
Before specifying, not without irony: “He managed to repay his debt on October 7, when Hamas attacked and my nephew was kidnapped and murdered. » Yuval Bitton cuts bitterly, showing the photo of Tamir, who died at the age of 38, during the battle for the kibbutz of Nir Oz.
The hardest part for the former dentist is that he is convinced that the massacre could have been avoided: “In 2004, Sinouar told me face to face: ‘We will wait for the day when you are weakened and at that time we will attack you.’ Today you are strong, but you may be disintegrating from the inside, because you have many flaws. We will make a truce, but the day we recognize that you are weak, we will attack you. 20 years have passed and this is what happened.remembers the doctor.
